Page 135 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Amaetheon waved him over and presented a golden scythe Tyghan hadn’t noticed before. “Here, let me show you how.” The tall god had leaned over him, wrapped his hands around Tyghan’s, ensuring his grip, then helped him angle the blade, and they swung. In that manner, together they had cut and bundled a whole field of wheat in an hour, a job that would have taken days for an ordinary farmer. Amaetheon had pressed a ripe seedhead into Tyghan’s small, blistered palm, saying it was a tithe for the Cauldron of Plenty.
“Come next spring,” the god told Tyghan. “I will show you how to plow.”
When Tyghan ran back to the farmhouse to tell his parents the wheat was harvested, they thought it was only a childish story—until they saw it. A few days later when his family returned to the palace, all Tyghan could talk about was becoming a farmer and returning to the farm in the spring.
His parents laughed and reminded him that the week before, he had aspired to be the Knight Commander of Danu and as secondborn prince, it was his birthright. He wanted to be a knight, too. He could be both, he told them, but for the next few months, his sights remained set on wheat, barley, and long days in the sun with Amaetheon. The god himself was going to teach him how to plow.
But Tyghan didn’t return in the spring as he had promised the god. By then his father was dead and his mother gone, a broken shadow.
Life changed. He changed. His brother was crowned king. Scythes were forgotten. He threw himself into swords, spells, and strategies. Eris and Madame Chastain tutored him day and night. A Knight Commander was all he wanted to be, all he was destined to be, his whims of autumn abandoned. Change was inevitable. Everyone had to grow into what they were meant to be. He didn’t regret it. Becoming a knight had been his first passion.
But what if you were forced to become something you didn’t want to be?
Convince her. The tick must go.
After they had left the newly closed portal, Bristol had ridden ahead with her friends, all of them occupied with excited chatter, but Quin and Kasta had fallen back with him. “Are we supposed to stab her every time she needs a little more magic?” Kasta asked, a practical question that had even crossed Tyghan’s mind.
“It’s incredible what she did,” Quin added, “but the restless dead pouring through the Abyss portal aren’t going to wait politely every time we need to stick a knife in her back.”
“We just had two victories,” Tyghan answered. “Maybe we should focus on those before moving on to all the downsides.”
“Ignoring downsides?” Kasta’s lip lifted in a sneer. “That is not the Knight Commander speaking. That is a smitten—”
“Watch your words, Kasta,” Tyghan warned between gritted teeth. “I am still king.” He felt her seething beside him. By then Eris and Dalagorn had ridden up and joined in, advice and concern bubbling up around him.
She acted on her own.
We’re not making the plans anymore. She is.
Rein her in. She must be under your command.
The tick must go. For Danu’s sake.
For all of Elphame.
Control. That was what they really wanted. Complete control. It didn’t matter that when Bristol had strayed from the plans, she’d met with success. She went against a direct order and danced with Kormick. She employed Madame Chastain in a plan no one else was privy to. It wasn’t the unexpected plans as much as thatshewas making them. What else might she do without consulting them? And simmering unsaid beneath it all was the worry that perhaps she was too much like her father—or, worse, her mother. She was still an enigma to them. Part fae, part something else. She was an enigma to herself. He remembered the fear in her eyes that day in the throne room.
I can’t become something else. It’s too late.
But that was what they all wanted her to be. Something else. They wanted her to be like her mother, but not like her, too. They were trying to create something safe, controllable, but powerful—water that burned like fire.
That morning, as Bristol drifted off to sleep in his arms, Tyghan had stared at her shoulder, grateful she couldn’t see the changes. Now was not the time to dampen her spirit, not when they were so close. Olivia had remained quiet when she healed the stab wound on Bristol’s shoulder, but her concerned eyes had briefly met Tyghan’s before fluttering downward. Later, when Bristol was out of earshot, Olivia still didn’t mention it, perhaps knowing it was best left a quiet secret just between the two of them.
But stabbing the tick for more magic had come at a cost.
A faint line of golden scales now rippled along the blade of Bristol’s shoulder.
CHAPTER 91
August huffed and pranced, a wondrous sight in his ribbons and braids. Bells jingled from his tack, and fire danced in his pupils. Children lining the road stepped forward in awe, then back with fright. Little fauns feigned bravery but hurried behind their mother’s skirts when August whinnied, a deep, throaty reverberation that sounded more like a fearsome beast than a horse. Pixies sitting on tree branches that arched over the road were unafraid and threw flowers onto the path below them. August led the pageantry, as he always did, first between the bonfires, and then through the hamlet with the king riding on his back, acknowledging the cheers, but August knew, it was really him they came to see, the beast of legend and lore who bore kings into battles.
The girl rode on his back too, sitting just in front of the king, but he wasn’t sure why. She was nobody of consequence, not even a minor royal. Master Woodhouse had wooed and cooed August as he groomed his fetlocks that morning, telling August to be kind, as if he suspected he might buck her. It was an amusing thought, but the steeds of the Tuatha de were royalty in their own right. They didn’t stoop to such crude behavior, at least not in public ceremonies. But perhaps later—
“They love you, August,” the girl whispered to him, patting his neck.
Of course they do, August thought, but it was nice that the girl acknowledged it, no matter how lowly a creature she might be. He could tolerate her presence on his back. And then, inexplicably, she scratched behind his ear, soothing an itch he didn’t even know he had.
The note was secure in the intruder’s palm. With so many away from the palace for Beltane, it wasn’t difficult sneaking into Bristol’s room, but choosing the right place to hide the note was another matter. It was disturbing to find so many of the king’s personal belongings scattered about. He was spending as much time in her chambers as his own—which could be problematic. It wouldn’t do for him to stumble upon the note.
